24 BULLETIN 102, PART 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
be to relieve the further upward tendency from the acute increase 
which present conditions will inevitably create. The result, in fine, 
will be to prolong to the utmost the period of cheap coah 1 
The advantages of integration in coal production are well known in 
other countries. The thin seams of the eastern coal fields of Canada 
can only be worked under a cooperative system, as pointed out by 
the Canadian Department of Mines. Belgian mining law imposes the 
obligation of cooperative measures upon the coal-mining concession- 
aire. Cooperative coal marketing has been successfully practiced in 
many parts of the world, notably in Germany and in the Transvaal. 
In short, coal as a resource demands cooperative measures of 
development. This is true of coal in peculiar degree and holds 
equally for no other resource. The reason is twofold. In the first 
place, coal deposits do not lend themselves, as do many other types 
of mineral deposits, to a graded extraction of values according to the 
strength of economic demand. In the second place, coal as the major 
source of power is the basis of modern life, and as such imposes upon 
organized society a direct responsibility to insure its most effective 
disposition. 
VI. 
Coal is a resource requisite to the functioning of every other re- 
_ source. The home, industry, and commerce are entirely dependent 
upon its adequacy. Coal is the basis of organized life. Other raw 
materials are merely parts of the social fabric — incidental to it; iron, 
for example, does not come to the consumer as such; but coal is com- 
fort and energy as well as a commodity to be manufactured. Coal, 
therefore, in its far-reaching consequences, has assumed a responsi- 
bility equalled by no other substance. 
Under present conditions, coal fails to measure up to that respons- 
ibility. It is wastefully mined, wastefully distributed, and wastefully 
utilized. It is wastefully mined because of the conditions of competi- 
tion which society imposes upon its exploitation. It is wastefully 
distributed as a result of the unnecessary transportation in regions 
supplied with water power or with coals less desirable than those con- 
sumed. It is wastefully used due to the lack of by-product recovery 
as an accepted economic practice. 
The wastes in mining may be decreased through integrated opera- 
tions, which will obviate the economic necessity for waste. Coal 
submits itself to integration as a public utility. 
The wastes in distribution may be reduced through the develop- 
ment of hydro-electric power, thus relieving coal of unnecessary 
1 It need scarcely be pointed out the advantages of by-product utilization may be realized without the 
gains of integrated mining, but the first may be largely nullified through the neglect of the second. 
